Tour des Livres de Oregon, et al

I’m leaving on Sunday, on the train. I am not a fan of flying, though I’ll do it. But, given the choice, I like the train better. I like being able to walk around, see where we are, eat dinner from china plates and watch the landscape roll by. My great aunt Doris traveled by train. So I’m taking the train on my book tour. It starts Sunday, and we (and by we, I mean Doris-who-lives-in-my-head and me, just us two. Just me, actually.) — we get on the train in Oakland at 9pm and arrive in Portland at 4pm, -ish. Then I have to skeedaddle to my hotel because I’m onstage at 7 p.m. In costume. Speaking intelligently. Ha.

But anyhoo, that’s what’s up. I have two readings on the first two nights, and I have a meetup with Doris fans if there are any in Portland. I also am going to hang out with a couple of Portland history nerds who have promised to talk about PDX history til we puke. Or some such.

I have a plan to rent a car and drive myself around to see various and sundry places. Doris’s former houses in Portland. Her schools. Where best friend Marjie lived in Oak Grove, and Doris lived when she was away from her family (1928-29 school year). I want to spin around Reed College and see what I can see. What Doris might have seen. Looking forward to some one-on-one time with Doris-in-my-head.

Then home — another 18 hour ride in the train, overnight again, and a weekend of laundry, and then a couple ‘nother weeks on a train starting in Los Angeles, then to Albuquerque, and then to Flagstaff/Prescott, and then back to Oakland. On the train I will give at least one reading, too. How cool is that?

Then we talk about local readings again — Petaluma and San Francisco and Redding. Very exciting, all of it.

I will be posting to Facebook and probably to my blog, and here’s hoping I don’t have any more adventures of “Julie Parker, Woman of Mystery,” but you never know. So far — so good.

Check out the Doris Diaries web site if you want details about where I’m reading — everything is posted on the Book Tour page, up-to-date. As soon as I get info, I update this. Trust me.

Otherwise, I’ll be tweeting and sniping from Facebook. Same as it ever was.

Also, in case you thought I wasn’t being green anymore, I am. I bought a carbon credit to offset my train trips and use exclusively recycled paper products in everything I produce or sen d out. I also chose print on demand (POD) for the very purpose of working green. Hope that gives you some shiny green comfort. (hearts)

Peace be to you and yours.
xx

a hazard to myself

I had a toxic relationship with my garage. It was ugly in there. Cans of half-used paint that were there when we moved in. Pesticide – which I never use. Old building supplies, like hardened bags of plaster and grout that had never been opened but had gotten damp. A bottle of chalk for marking lines at the soccer field (we don’t play soccer). And a rusting can of some kind of tar stuff for patching the roof – stick on the outside and too scary to actually open.
Everyone knows (I hope) not to throw these things in the garbage – they will surely leak into the ecosystem – groundwater supplies, the watershed, wetlands, the Bay. The paint cans and containers are probably recyclable (steel?) but what’s inside isbad news. Please – don’t even think about pouring it into the gutter or down your storm drain. Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200for that one (or you should).
But still – it seemed onerous to deal with the toxics. So there they sat – for six years. Six years of that corner of the garage out of bounds for storage or use. Six years while the cans and contents got a little funkier and leakier. All in all, not a good scene, and not very green nor healthful, either.
But I got a flyer in the mail from www.household-hazardouswaste.org one day. It said “Free drop-off” of hazardous materials for county residents. The flyer listed the hours and days the facility was open. So first we put down a sheet of cardboard to catch any drips, then loaded up the back of the car. There is a limit to how much you can take to drop off, but a typical household is not likely to have more than 15 gallons of paint at one time.
The car ride took longer than the drop-off. And it was more painful, too, because the toxics were some nasty, bad-smelling stuff. I felt like we were losing brain cells just driving it across town and over the bridge – windows rolled down.
The drop-off? Completely painless, free, and so fast that I wondered why I had waited six years. It went like this:
Drive into driveway. Wait for car ahead of us – maybe a one minute wait.
Nice man gives us a short form to fill out with name, address and what we were dropping off in general.


We roll forward and a couple of workers open the trunk and take everything away, sorting it themselves. This takes about two minutes.
They close the trunk and say goodbye. We drive away, not five minutes in total, and not a penny spent. We can still smell the fumes for a few minutes, but open windows clear the air.
We go spend the rest of our day frivolously.

So what’s holding you back from getting rid of toxic waste in your basement, backyard, garage or back porch?
Here are the addressed of Contra Costa and Alameda sites. No appointment necessary. Check the web site for more information.
West County Facility
101 Pittsburg Ave., Richmond
(888) 412-9277
Central County Facility 
4797 Imhoff Place, Martinez
(800) 646-1431
East County Facility
2550 Pittsburg-Antioch Highway, Antioch
(925) 756-1990 
2100 East 7th Street
41149 Boyce Road
2091 W. Winton Ave.
5584 La Ribera Street

10 green things

A friend recently blogged about how she spent her frugal day (hello, Katy Wolk-Stanly and the Non-Consumer Advocate) and all the cool things she did in just a typical day that saved money. Shamelessly riffing on her Frugal Day is this, my Green Day, or how I – without pain or needless suffering – make green choices every day.
1. Reheated yesterday’s coffee. I didn’t finish the pot of coffee yesterday, and sure, I could have thrown it out and made new fresh coffee. But where does coffee come from? Not Alameda County. No, it’s generally shipped from at least Central America or Hawaii, and at most, from Africa or farther afield. Shipping the coffee here uses fossil fuel, and coffee in general has a pretty big carbon footprint (four pounds of carbon per pound of coffee, estimated). As well, it takes energy to grind and brew coffee. Reheating yesterday’s coffee saves the planet in a small way – which adds up if over a year, you make half as much coffee. (You can buy carbon-neutral coffee, btw, or drink tea, which has a lower footprint, and avoid milk, which adds more greenhouse gasses than either coffee or tea. Cows and methane, you know…)

2. Used waxed paper to wrap up the Boy’s lunch. Plastic wrap takes a jillion years to decompose but waxed paper is compostable. Waxed bags are just as handy as plastic baggies for chips or other crunchy snacks.

3. Reused a bag to hold his school lunch. We used to have about five reusable lunchboxes but somehow they’ve been lost along the way. I am hoping to find a decent one at Goodwill or other thrift store; in the meantime, we’re reusing bags that show up at our house.

4.  Parked at the mall and walked to all the storesI needed to visit. I batched my errands to avoid using fossil fuel for repeated stops and starts in the car. Walking to the post office, pet food store, office supply store and more made for free exercise as well as a savings in the fuel budget. Note that green activities often save you money, which is just completely bonus. Took my own bags, too.

5.  Purchased recycled products: 100% recycled paper for the home printer, recycled paper bathroom tissue, recycled aluminum foil, and ball point pens made from recycled materials.

6.  Attended a marketing webinar at home, which saved on travel expenses, fossil fuels and all the expenses of leaving the house (coffee, parking meters, bridge tolls, etc.)


7.  Switched out rechargeable batteries for son’s video game controller.  We haven’t bought new batteries in months – maybe years. Invest in a charger for AA and AAA batteries, and 2-3 sets of batteries. Put one in each room where batteries are always in use (TV remote control or garage door opener?). That way it’s easy to find them when you need them, and the batteries get used over and over.

8. Cleaned out empty paint cans and half-used junk from the basement. These are loaded in the back of the car for next time I swing through Oakland and can drop off (for free!) at the toxic waste place. (More on this in the next blog.)

9. Took own water and coffee in the car; took own coffee cup to the coffee house whenever we go there; hang onto the cardboard coffee-sleeve (or use one of my home-knit ones) for reuse. I keep coffee sleeves in my purse and glove box just for this. I also keep one of those fast-food 4-cup cardboard cupholders in the car, under the front seat, for the next time we do a drive-through. Why not reuse the one instead of getting a fresh one every time?

10. Ate leftovers for lunch. How is this green? Food waste is one of the biggest offenders in creating methane gas. And studies show Americans throw outas much as 40 percent of the food they buy. That’s just not cool.
What are you doing to be green today? And, just a thought, how much are you saving by greening your life?

Trash and the Single Female

I’m not a single female. Happily married, see? (waggles ring finger.) But I’m the only female in this house. So why am I head-down in the trash can? How did taking out the garbage become a gendered job? Should I feel like I’m doing the gentlemen (Mr Husband and The Boy) a big fat favor when I’m taking out the trash? Should I get annoyed when it’s still sitting here in the kitchen? Who died and made me the Boss of Everything?

Uh. No one. Of course, I wouldn’t be alone in thinking that taking out the trash is the man’s job. Check out these marriage experts, and this one, and even these knuckleheads who have strong opinions about the Taking Out of the Trash. Looks like everyone has some thoughts on the matter.

Sorting trash. Yeah, that’s me.

 Amusing, but that’s not really our point today. I take out the trash as much as anyone else. It all depends who’s home when it’s full. But more important — it’s not just trash. We have a system of what goes where. Actual real garbage (which includes nasty bathroom stuff, old Bandaids and soiled plastics) is not much in existence at this house (apartment). We have a 1-gallon can in the kitchen that is lined with a small plastic grocery bag and is rarely even filled. One of us takes it down every week or so to the gray can. The gray can is usually pretty empty. We could get away with once-a-month service. Not so for the green and blue cans.

Everything else gets sorted and either composted or recycled. Broken glass? Recycled.
Electronics? Recycled.
Old clothes? Used for rags, then recycled.
Empty paint can? Recycled.
Paint can with some paint left over? Taken to Alameda County Industries for household hazardous waste disposal. (Free!)
Plastic bags? Collected and returned to grocery stores.

Look! Bottle caps!
Which one of you wise guys…?

Sometimes people (I won’t name names) put the wrong thing in the trash. Bottle caps, for example, are recyclable. Don’t throw them in the garbage. How long do you think it takes a metal can or bottle cap to decompose in “garbage,” aka landfill? About 50 years. More or less.

Probably more.

It’s easy to compost/green waste your leftovers and pizza boxes. Seems like everyone gets a green can at the curb these days, from whatever trash management company your city or area uses. We had two magnificent compost bins working at our last house, our Little City Farm, plus chickens, but I don’t find it too odious (odorous?) to take a load down to the green bin every day, now that we are apartment-dwellers. I have to leave the house anyway, right?


While taking out the trash may or may not be your purview at your house, I have always found it a simple starter-chore for kids. It’s a good idea to teach them young about recycling and what can go back into the earth (the circle of life, right?), and help carry it out to the curb. It’s not as if the need to recycle and reduce waste will go away soon. Good habits start early.
Better yet, though, is reducing, or pre-cycling, what comes into the house. Potato chip bags, with few exceptions, are not recyclable. Sun Chips (original flavor) has a biodegradable bag, and so does Boulder Canyon. If you can find these brands, it’s no problem to green-waste the bag afterward. If you’re buying Mylar bags or loud, crinkly plastic bag chips (Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Doritos, et al), you’re in trouble. Not likely that your local center will recycle those, and they end up in landfill. And how many bags a year are we talking? The Potato Growers Association says we eat three billion bags of chips (of all flavors) per year. Three billion? That’s a lot of landfill. I’m just saying. Can’t control what everyone else does, but we can control what we buy and how we affect the landscape around us. Think about that next time you reach for a plastic bag of chips. And even though The Boy loves them, I avoid buying them, knowing I’ll still see a few bags in the garbage anyway (= what I can’t control).
I’m working on this with other products. I go to the meat counter and ask for paper-only wrapping instead of getting plastic-wrapped bacon, lunch meats or fish. Better quality and fewer preservatives means it eat sooner, too. It won’t last a month in the fridge the way nationally branded products encased in plastic might. Which leads to less food waste, which leads to less methane in the atmosphere. Slower warming of the globe and all that.
You get the picture. Think about what’s coming in through the front door, and you’ll be able to manage how it goes out the trash can even more. Worry less about who’s taking out the trash and more about what you’re putting into it. A full recycling bin bespeaks a generous heart. Or something like that.
All smiles!

many changes instantly

Farewell, White House.

I used to work for MCI, one of the early long-distance companies, which came into its own after the breakup of the telephone monopoly. Sprint still exists, but MCI was bought up by someone else and is long gone. However, back in the day (this was about 1986), we workers of the early telemarketing plantations often received new edicts from above. So many that we said the company’s initials must stand for “Many Changes Instantly.”

So here we are, in MCI mode — many changes instantly. Three months ago I was enjoying a full house of offspring and a healthy husband, chickens, a lovely piano, 5 bedrooms and a lush garden, a clothesline, a compost heap and about seven different kinds of recycling and trash containers. Mr. Husband said that you needed a PhD to figure out what trash went where at our Big White House. Today, however, we’ve done a few backflips.

Mr. Husband had a pain in his back around Christmas that got worse very quickly and they eventually discovered two ruptured discs. With a quick change in employment and where the Boy is going to school next year, we decided we had better move sooner rather than in summer. Found an adorable 2-bedroom apartment in central Alameda and started packing. Our motto was “Everything must go!” With a full attic, a full garage and large yard, plus all those bedrooms, this was no small task. The chickens had to find a new home, as did the coop. The bales of straw. The tiki bar and all the decorations. The hammock. The piano. One of the three cats. Two of the daughters. Most of the holiday decorations. Our large dining table that seated 12. Dishes. Canning jars. At least two-thirds of my fabric and yarn stash. Everything must go. And off it went.

We rented a Dumpster, but put amazingly little into it. Instead, green-hearted gal that I am, I worked tirelessly to find homes for everything and everyone. We had a “free” garage sale, in which just about everything we had in the garage went out and was given freely. I donated to Goodwill, ThriftTown and Salvation Army countless times. Sold books, CDs, DVDs and albums. Sold anything relatively “antique” to a dealer in town. Donated books to the Friends of the Library. Gave tons of books and art/school supplies to local schools. Gave a single mom down on her luck just about everything she could want for setting up an apartment for herself and her daughter — dishes, furniture, clothes and more. Gave the piano to our neighbor with 6 children. We downsized our personal library by about 75 percent. Maybe more. Garden goodies went to several Freecyclers. Old blankets and towels went to the pet shelter. Empty boxes came from Freecycle and have since been given back to be used again.

Softball team to the rescue. Mr Husband crouching in pain,
with smart-aleck friend copying him.
(Self, center, which is where I should be.)

Through all this, we had one mishap after another. Daughter #4, just two days before moving out, had a Saturday night spill that fractured her elbow. The Boy got bonked in the head at school in PE, suffering a minor concussion. Right after that he got a horrendous cold. Mr. Husband couldn’t lift anything or even sit or stand without excruciating pain (but he moved things anyway. Stubborn as a burro!). I won’t even tell you how messed up my shoulder, neck and sciatica got. We were able to borrow a truck from a friend for a couple of weeks, which made short trips with boxes much easier. We corralled a dozen strong guys for the big moving day and it was over, I kid you not, in 2 hours. Had a few days of searching among the boxes, and then it was time for Mr. Husband’s surgery.

That was last week. He’s well, thank you, and improving daily. We take little walks and he starts physical therapy next week. Yay for modern medicine! We’re here in the new place (see photo of our living room below), with another 20 boxes or so to unpack, and a new more urban lifestyle to discover in our upstairs Victorian flat:  our Red House (since I like to name our houses).

How are things different?

1. No laundry line, at least so far. We have a plumbing problem with the washer and dryer that the landlord is going to fix. Some day. I went to the laundromat last week and hope I can get this resolved soon. Also bought an indoor clothesline but the critical bracket is missing so I have to return it. Grrr.

2. No compost or chickens to eat leftovers. That means I have thrown into the green waste can things which chickens would have eaten up — plate scrapings, cereal crumbs, stale bread. On the other hand, there are just 3 of us now, so there’s a lot less green waste overall. I wonder how bad it would be to feed the local ducks with old bread crusts?

New living room, with stuff still in
boxes and pictures awaiting a nail or two.

3. We have heat now, where we didn’t before, and that’s new and different for us. It’s delicious! But we’ll have to look at our usage and not overdo it. Not sure how insulated this (drafty) house is, for one thing, and then — well, global warming and all that.

4. Garden. There’s isn’t one here, but I have been paying attention to where the sun falls, and where it is always shady. I brought over several container plants (herbs) and there’s a lemon tree and a tangerine tree on the property. But how can I garden in a shady, compact way?

5. Shopping locally/walking everywhere: This will be possible, finally, with a small grocery store with sustainable meat and organic produce nearby. But I have hardly had a chance to walk around and see what’s what, what with surgery and moving and all. Looking forward to this greatly.

6. Living lightly. Not having to drive everywhere, not having to support such a large family, not having so much stuff — it’s all good. I expect to feel the impact of the move in our budget as well as in what we bring in/send out as trash. Life is different in a downtown apartment than in an outlying rambling house and yard.

It remains to be seen how green we can be here, and how can I/we make it ever more so. Keep me company while we figure it out, will you? (Oh, please, say yes!)